Politics and Poetics

Whether one admits it or not, there is always a close interrelationship between politics and poetics; indeed, even the most blatant denial of interest in anything political signifies nothing less than a political stance. Using various approaches -- thematic, biographical and New Historicist, this book begins with a discussion of ''romanticism'' as an important term signifying a cross-cultural literary value and then proceeds to compare John Keats and Li He, both of whom are considered major ''romantic'' poets in world literature, in terms of their sociopolitical contexts, their ''patriotic'' feeling and rebellious spirit, their abiding concern for human suffering, and their common quest for the ideal. With an in-depth comparison between two representative poets well known for their strong tendencies towards aestheticism in two major literary traditions, the book should thus prove useful and even helpful to anyone interested in the poetry of John Keats or Li He in particular, and to anyone else concerned with the relationship between politics and poetics in general.